had gone out of
town, and their son, a beautiful boy about ten years old, had got
himself run over by a truck. His governess, I gathered, a German fool,
had been in some way directly responsible. But that is the small end of
the matter. The boy's legs were horribly crushed and mangled. It seemed
to me that if his life was to be saved, they must come off at once. The
family's physician was the famous old Doctor Watson Bell. I sent for
him. He didn't come at once, and when I had waited as long as I dared,
I took upon my own shoulders the very heavy responsibility of operating.
I put the child under ether, and with the help of one assistant took his
legs off just below the hip-joints. Then Dr. Bell came. He was a very
old friend of my father's, and he had always been very good to me. First
he looked to see that what had been done had been well done. Then he
examined the legs that I had taken off. Then he sent the nurse out of
the room. Then he turned and looked at me, and his face was gray and
cold as a stone. He said: 'You fool! You imbecile!' And he showed me,
clear as a flash of lightning, that the legs never should have been
amputated. Then he said, more gently: 'For your father's sake I will
save your face, young man. I shall set my approval to this catastrophe.
For your father's sake, and for your mother's. I have always looked on
you as an adopted son. Are you drunk?' I told him that I had been up all
night, and had had no sleep since five o'clock the morning before. He
shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'In your right mind, you couldn't have
done it,' and I knew that I couldn't. 'Horrible!' he said, 'horrible!
This poor baby to be a wreck of a thing all his life, because a healthy
and hearty young man cannot get along on a little sleep. But, thank God,
the child will never know that the operation wasn't necessary,'

"By common accord, we turned to look at the little boy. His eyes were
open. He had come out of the ether with miraculous suddenness. And we
saw by the expression of his face that he had heard--and that he had
understood."

Barbara took her father's hand in both hers and pressed it hard. "Poor
old dad," she said.

"Of course," Dr. Ferris went on, "the child told his parents. But Dr.
Bell lied up and down to save my face. He said that what the child
thought he had heard was part of an ether dream. And I lied. And nobody
believed the little boy. I had told him, before Dr. Bell could stop
me--I was hyste